


Memory

by the north has risen (inwhispersandscreams)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future fic!, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 09:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inwhispersandscreams/pseuds/the%20north%20has%20risen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Tell me of my mother,” he growls out – and it is a growl, deep and rasping, a sound of a voice that is used too little for the words to be clean and clear and crisp. He is not refined like the people that surround her with slick voices and fine words. No, he is all that is simple and bloody.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory

He is wild, and she is timid; growls are torn from his throat when he is angered, but she sits in silence, using the shadows to mask the wreckage of her face now that a blade has separated the skin. He frightens her too, for he moves too lithely like an animal on the prowl, like the great black beast that pads beside him wherever he goes. His beast is nothing like Sansa’s was ( _she remembers that little wolf, and the fear she felt at the sight of Sansa’s Lady now seems so small and dim in comparison to what she feels now when she sees the black direwolf_ ) – it is larger and more feral, snarling at those who dare to approach his owner. They are an extension of one another Myrcella swears, for they curl around each other and snap at the strangers that surround them, but she doesn’t blame them. They are the last of the Northern Wolves, a dying breed of Stark men and Kings’ Landing has proved fatal to all the Starks who dared to enter it.

She may be older than him, but his time on Skagos has turned the little Rickon that Myrcella remembers slightly in her mind into a manboy with harsh lines etched onto his face. They tell her to soothe him, but she doesn’t know how to soothe wild animals. It was always Tommen who could tame and befriend the wild creatures of the world, and Rickon _is_ wild. His anger is animalistic and his retribution swift and violent, and though she may have a guard around her, Myrcella doesn’t think that they would stand a chance against the last Stark and the great beast that pads by his side at all times. He is not a noble lord like his brother was ( _she still remembers how she’d clutched at Robb’s arm that first banquet at Winterfell, a red flush on her cheeks because he stood so tall and so handsome_ ), but equal parts animal and wildling, harshness and cruelty etched into his bones by necessity. _He survived Skagos; he must be brave_ , she tries to tell herself, to see something bright and hopeful that she can cling to, but then a man wearing Lannister red approaches Rickon, and the growl of his wolf seems to echo in her ears.

_Tame him, Myrcella_. She shakes as she approaches him, the green eyes of his direwolf focused on her as if it thinks about how far it would have to lunge to tear her throat from her. She may be twenty and one now, but she still remembers the pain of a sharpened blade passing through her skin, and thinks to herself that the pain of a direwolf’s teeth would be so much worse. _I am already scarred; what more have I to lose?_ Her mother said a woman’s beauty was her best weapon, and her beauty is lost – she cannot lose any more of it.

“I remember you, at Winterfell. You were small then.” She doesn’t know why these are the words that leave her mouth, but they are. Should she speak of his lost family instead, or his home that has long been in ruins, even once the fires that set it ablaze had gone out? He is sixteen now, and so much time has passed since then, but these are the words she speaks, ones about a long distant encounter. “You were often near your mother.”

His eyes are dark and stormy as he looks at her, and it takes all of her courage to not move away, though her shaking does not quite stop either, and her ears are sensitive to the slightest rumbling growls from Shaggydog. _Please, let him be calm_. His eyes linger on her face, sweeping across the red and gold ( _always Lannister red and gold_ ) gown that she wears and her green eyes, his mouth turning and twisting downwards as his hands clutched themselves into tight fists. _I will never tame him; he hates us all too much_ , she thinks – _despairs_ – and makes to move away, only to feel his hand clutch at her wrist and pull her back to him. His grip is tight, and it borders on pain, but she does not see the same kind of rough glee that she had seen in Joff’s features when she spied him hurting Tommen. _It’s like he doesn’t know_. He has lived a live full of harshness and death, and now does not understand any touch that is not so tight and cruel that it causes pain when it ought to cause comfort.

“Tell me of my mother,” he growls out – and it _is_ a growl, deep and rasping, a sound of a voice that is used too little for the words to be clean and clear and _crisp_. He is not refined like the people that surround her with slick voices and fine words. No, he is all that is simple and bloody. He is the unknown she has never encountered, a lord’s son who cannot understand fine words or knows the art of swordplay, but only understands crude things and what he can grasp.

His grip does not gentle even as she returns to his side, eyes warily on Shaggydog. “You don’t remember her?” The thought seems foreign to her; her mother is in her every memory, telling her to stand tall and that she is a Lannister, and a Lannister is proud. Her mother is a figure that Myrcella can never forget, so how can Rickon have forgotten his own?

He shakes his head, brow furrowed, and his free hand tangles in Shaggydog’s fur. “I remember... _red_. A song. A voice telling stories. A voice that sang of Jonquil. The sound of swords in the courtyard. A grey direwolf on white. Snow and hot stone walls. Statues with swords and the sound of dripping water from the roof. Bran riding on a man’s back.” His words seem to shake in the air as he says them, and it’s the first time Myrcella has heard anything akin to hesitance in him. _He believes it’s all a dream_. He was but three when she met him first, and scarcely a year older – if that – when Winterfell was razed. He was born on the cusp of ruin, and his life has been built around it. “And then I remember Skagos and Osha, the men who came with blood on their breath and the hut where I slept and the spear that I used to fish. Shaggydog keeping the men away when they came, ripping them apart and their screams. But I don’t remember her. Or you.”

She is silent for a moment, before she decides how to continue. “Your mother was the Lady Stark, and her hair was Tully red,” she starts, and gradually his grip on her arm loosens as she tells him about what little she knows of the Starks. She tells him what she remembers of her trip north ( _there was so much snow, and it was still summer – the whole earth covered in a blanket of it while here the women walked around in wisps of silk. I could scarcely believe it_ ) and watches his face for the signs of his shifting, changing moods. His features darken when she tells him of the fate of his family, of his father beheaded, Robb killed by the Frey’s, Arya and Sansa lost and yet to be seen again, and Bran... she doesn’t know what to tell him of Bran, but the truth. “We thought you were dead – it was only the missive from Lord Manderly that told us you yet lived.”

He stands and leaves the room as suddenly as he does everything else, quickly and without remorse, leaving her staggering in the wake of the sudden change in atmosphere. His features are dark and anger burns in his eyes, Shaggydog pacing around his feet with his tail high and with enough energy that it sets Myrcella’s nerves alight with fear. But he leaves the room without a backward glance to her, without a feral growl at her figure dressed in Lannister gold and red, and that’s enough she thinks.

_It’s enough_.


End file.
